Category: leadership
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Leadership Paradox
I recently began formally mentoring someone, and so I have been thinking about the nature of leadership. There’s a bind that “leaders” face. It has to do with the expectations of those who are led, and of the person who is trying to be a helpful leader. Consider the teacher of yoga class. They “lead”…
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A Personal Mission of Agency
Each year-end I look back and reflect. I look at all areas of my life: family, professional, personal, spiritual, physical, financial. Across all of the major areas of my life, this has been a pivotal year of conceptual progress for me. I developed great clarity on my personal mission. And three ideas that began to…
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Building a Different Kind of Political Candidate
I’m in the middle of doing one of my favorite activities, something I’ve been involved in since the late 1990’s. It’s the Candidate Training Program, run by the Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership at the University of Virginia. I was a part of the design team for this program and have been involved in different…
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Starting With What's Important
Often, the way I want to package the message is not the way I should package it in order for it to be best heard.
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Time For A Conversation
A good friend writes on Facebook: Now is not the time, but sometime soon, while the searing memories are still fresh, we must have a candid conversation about how we all will live in the new world climate change is bringing to us. After a disaster, there is a defiant urge to remake what was…
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Creating Values Skeptics: My Latest Column at Ethics Newsline
Students these days continually are bombarded with messages throughout school and extracurricular activities that remind them of what their “core values” ought to be. There are posters in the hallways with acronyms designed to generate pep and morals all at once. There are T-shirts, stickers, decals, pencils, and more — all boasting aspirational lists of…
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The University of Virginia and The New Transparency: My Latest Column At Ethics Newsline
The announcement was terse. “On behalf of the Board of Visitors, we are writing to tell you that the Board and President Teresa Sullivan today mutually agreed that she will step down as president of the University of Virginia effective August 15, 2012.” Later in the announcement, a statement from President Sullivan referred to “a…
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The Learning Attitude Curve
I’ve been thinking lately about how our attitudes shift over time, especially when faced with new learning or practices. Many people are familiar with the “attitude curve,” which describes people’s response to change. It’s a U shape — people have to go through a low point before they accept change. This is a familiar idea…
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My Ancestor, Tiernan O'Rourke, The Irish King
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, so it is a good time to explore the Irish king in my ancestry, Tiernan O’Rourke. Tiernan (or Tigernan Ua Ruairc) was king of Breifne, a region that no longer exists, from around 1124 until around 1172. Breifne was where the current counties Cavan and Leitrim are. At the height of…
Brad Rourke 